Brett Said:

need help getting information on helping a child at home with speech therapy?

We Answered:

Your question is very broad and difficult to answer without more information. There is a company called LinguiSystems, which is where the speech language pathologists in our area buy many of their materials. A look at their site and catalog might give you some ideas.

I have included other links that may be helpful to you.

Steve Said:

how can i teach speech therapy at home?

We Answered:

First of all, has your son be evaluated by a speech pathologist? If not, you have several options (at least in NY). 1) you can call your doctor and ask for a referral to a therapist who takes your insurance. The down side is that therapy funded by insurance usually has to be done in an office setting, not in your home. 2) your next option is to contact your school district and ask for an evaluation. In NY, the school district will pay for a comprehensive speech evaluation. The evaluation is also usually done in a therapy setting, not in the home. The evaluation process also usually includes a psychological evaluation. Once the evals are completed, you will have a meeting with the evaluators AND the school district to determine if therapy is warranted. If it is, you can ask to have the therapy provided in your home. Any therapy approved by a school district is paid by the district, so your income should not be a factor. After reading your other questions, i just wanted to add that a speech pathologist can also help with your son's feeding issues. And, if he's not walking, the evaluation process can (and should) include a physical therapy and occupational therapy evaluation.

If your son is found to have needs in all the above areas, it may be best to send him to a preschool that can accomodate all of his therapies each day in the school. You can look for "center-based preschool programs". These schools are great in that all the therapists can take a team approach when it comes to working with your son. They also (at least the ones i have been affiliated with) encourage parental participation. either through phone calls, notebooks passed back and forth, or the parent coming in to observe or participate in therapy.

When i do home based therapy, i encourage the parents to watch/participate in order to carryover the techniques i have introduced into every day life. Sometimes, the child will not work well when the parents are watching. In that case, i like to work with the child by ourselves, and take the last 5 minutes or so to review all the work we have done for the session with the parents in order to check carryover. I am also big on sending home homework.....worksheets, specific tasks, etc.

It's difficult to give you some specific ideas about what to do now. If he is having trouble understanding your directions (can he follow a 2-3 step direction? such as, "give me your shoe, then touch your nose, then give mommy a hug?")? If so, practice 1 step directions. SHow him what you want done. You can move up to 2 ten 3 steps as he gets better. If he understands, and is not speaking (does he use any words? phrases?), you can try to introduce some simple signs to provide him a way to communicate his wants/needs. THere are lots of websites that will teach you sign language. I would stick to simple signs such as "more", "eat", "toilet", etc. I he is having trouble talking because he cannot pronounce his letters, i would wait until the therapist starts working with him b/c we use some specific techniques that are better when individually selected to meet to specific needs of the child at hand.

The American Speech and Hearing Association has a website, and they can probably help you find a therapist who is in your area. Anyone who is a member has also received a master's degree and served a 9 month "probationary" period after graduating where we are supervised by another therapist. The website is www.ahsa.org

good luck

Cynthia Said:

Speech therapy at home?

We Answered:

Hi,
I feel your pain. My daughter did not qualify for speech services until she entered school, as her cognitive & motor skills were not compromised. She was born in Feb, so did not start kindergarten until she was 5.5.

What I did was order Straight Talk from Natthan : http://www.nathhan.com/straight.htm

It is an at-home therapy that can help you figure out what your child's weaknesses are.

Join other YahooGroups for help.

My daughter is 7 now, and is speaking more along the lines of a 3-4 year old... But, before I implemented Straight Talk, all she had was the b,m,p, and d sounds with a couple vowel sounds in there...

I like this website too http://www.linguisystems.com/ The Easy Does it book for Articulation helped once we got past the making sounds phase.

You can strengthen his tongue/mouth with oral motor exercises: http://www.speech-therapy-on-video.com/o…

Our ST also suggests sticking the tongue out and in as many times as he can... in the following weeks, try to add a couple more times, etc. We began at 5 and ended at 10... then move on to another, where he makes circles around his lips 5 times... pokes the side of his cheek, then the other side... side to side movement of her tongue, up and down... drinking yogurt through a straw, etc.

I hope that helps! I know how frustrating it can be to get help for your child. Our first St had NO clue and did not help at all. (A whole year wasted)... This year, the ST is focusing on oral motor, and sentence fluency... beginning this year she was doing 3 word intelligible sentences. Now, she is up to 5-7. :)

Also, check and see if he may have a dairy intolerance. Removing dairy from my daughter's diet was key, as she had frequent ear infections, belly bloat and other gastrointestinal... as well as it clogged her ears to where she would have too much ear wax.

We also give her omega-3 fish oils, and those have helped her speech therapy "stick". The Late Talker book by Lisa Geng is helpful, too. (Will explain why therapy & fish oils are useful.) Google Omega 3 and speech and you will find a LOT of information. Here's one to get you started.
http://www.verbaldyspraxia.com/research%…

I know it is a lot to digest, but you can do it.
Good Luck!

Clayton Said:

Has anyone here got a child that needs speech therapy at 5yrs old?

We Answered:

No, but I took it in college to become a teacher.
Work w/ her. Find simplistic words that you have pictures of and WORK WITH HER. Break the words into sylables and show her WITH YOUR MOUTH how to say them. She is learning from scratch.....so start with sounds that are fun to hear, but somewhat difficult for her to make. Like, if memory serves me here, the "d" sound would be a hard one for her. Make that sound and show her a picture. Look for speech websites:
http://www.speechtx.com/
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/system/…
http://school.familyeducation.com/home-s…

My fellow teacher just read the book Home Schooling Children with Special Needs and it came highly recommend by our school district. They say the author of the book says "anyone can be trained to do speech therapy with his own child...provides all the tools needed to diagnose and remediate articulation difficulties. Worth checking into

Anthony Said:

How can I help my toddlers with their speech delay at home?

We Answered:

my daughter started speech therapy when she was 2. A therapist came to our house twice a week for an hour, played with my daighter, tried to get her to say things, did some oral motor exercises, and it was basically useless. We did this for an entire year and saw very little progress.
When my daughter turned 3 she aged out of early intervention, and the school system took over. She was enrolled into their pre-school program, went 5 days a week, 2 hrs a day. Received two 20 min sessions of individual therapy and two 20 min sessions of group therapy... When she started she had a vocab. of about 50 words. Now almost 1 yr later her vocab has increased to around 500 words and she speaks in sentences. She has come soooo far since she has been in school, its amazing.
I hear so many stories of children who started speech therapy at 2 and made very little progress, but once they got in to a school environment with other children, there vocabulary took off.